Much of today’s software relies on programming code shared openly online. Yet, it is unclear why volunteer developers contribute to open-source software (OSS), a public good. We study OSS contributions of some 22,900 developers worldwide on the largest online code repository platform, GitHub,...

This paper derives a three stage Cournotoligopoly game for product innovation, expenditure on introducing the product and competition on the product market. Product innovation is assumed to increase consumer utility but is effective only if the innovating firm invests in marketing, so that...

We examine the relation between consumer search and equilibrium prices when collusion is endogenously determined. We develop a theoretical model and show that average price is a U-shaped function of the measure of searchers: prices are highest when there are no searchers (local monopoly power)...

In this study, we analyze the incentives of a streaming platform to bias consumption when products are vertically differentiated. The platform offers mixed bundles of content to monetize consumer interest in variety and pays royalties to sellers based on the effective consumption of the...

We study the incentives of a streaming platform to bias consumption when products are vertically differentiated. The platform offers mixed bundles of content to monetize consumers' interest in variety and pays royalties to sellers based on the effective consumption of the content they produce....

This paper studies a principal-agent relation in which the principal's private information about the agent's effort choice is more accurate than a noisy public performance measure. For some contingencies the optimal contract has to specify ex post inefficiencies in the form of inefficient...

Economic development theories and their learning frameworks differently address farms and firms. This article argues that the traditional double-standard of the primacy of manufacturing rests on a debatable stages model that under-recognizes learning and innovation in agriculture and its...

Because China has become one of the largest applicants of PCT patents, it is of interest to compare the quality of Chinese and non-Chinese applications. We extend a quality index based on internationally comparable citation data from international search reports (ISR) to consider foreign,...

Pharmaceutical firms typically enjoy market exclusivity for new drugs from concurrent protection of the underlying invention (through patents) and the clinical trials data submitted for market approval (through data exclusivity). Patent invalidation during drug development renders data...

We investigate the causal effect of patent rights on cumulative innovation, using large-scale data that approximate the patent universe in its technological and economic variety. We introduce a novel instrumental variable for patent invalidation that exploits personnel scarcity in post-grant...